Are you just Socially Anxious or are you Actually Autistic?

I'd love to post more frequently on this channel because I have WAY too many ideas! To make the possible, I've started a Patreon. If you join, you'll get get 2 exclusive videos a month and access to the Discord server, even on the lowest tier:

Part 2 about sensory differences:

Part 3 about emotional experiences & interests:

This is the first part of my three-part series about signs of autism (I say women in the title, but these could apply to any individual of any gender...women are humans after all! We're also ridiculously under-diagnosed). I'm talking about all of the social stuff like playground loneliness and discomfort with eye contact.

00:00 How common is autism in girls? They got it wrong.
00:55 Common misdiagnoses
02:08 How men get away with autism
03:07 Don't worry if you don't relate
04:27 Do you have social anxiety?
05:43 Everyone else is managing this
07:50 Do you have any friends?
09:17 Can you keep friends?
10:40 How we feel about female friendships
12:50 Older or younger friends?
13:50 Are you naive?
15:59 Can you make eye contact?
20:00 What do you do with your hands?
21:26 Are you constantly monitoring yourself?

I really hope this is helpful/useful to you in some way. Thank you so much for taking to the time to watch! Feel free to make requests for future videos in the comments below.

DISCLAIMER: I am a second-year psychology student and a late-diagnosed #actuallyautistic individual. I am not a qualified healthcare professional.

*Books I'd Recommend about Autism:

Different not Less by Chloe Hayden (read if you want to cry):

Aspergirls by Rudy Simone:

Sources:

Finding the True Number of Females with Autistic Spectrum Disorder by Estimating the Biases in Initial Recognition and Clinical Diagnosis (2022):

YouTube Channels Mentioned:

Autism from the Inside:

*Links with a star are affiliate links. The channel will receive a small commission if you buy anything on Amazon after clicking through with this link. There's no extra cost to you and any money will go towards putting out more content. I'd love to post twice a week and put more time into research for these videos. Thank you so much - I really appreciate everyone sharing their stories in the comments.

[imautisticnowwhat]

I've posted my video about what autistic masking feels like from the inside (from my perspective, a few studies and articles, and the many other anecdotes I've read from the autistic community online):

[GilesHellier]

Eye contact is overrated. One listens with their ears, not their eyes.

[specificsoup]

I feel like my social anxiety comes from Autism + extreme self-awareness. like I notice people who are Autistic but less ... extremely just sort of be "awkward" and vibe with it or don't care and sometimes I'm jealous of that. i wanna just be weird

[Zidrazia]

The "prefers socialising outside your own age group" and "often misunderstood as flirting" is an unfortunate combination. I feel like autistic girls and afab people can be easy targets for grooming. We need to teach all kids what is and isn't appropriate, but I feel like this is especially important.

At the time it happened to me, I didn't really understand the social differences with ages. I felt so much older than I was! But now, I'm looking back as a 25-year-old, the same age as that person was when they entered a relationship with a 16-year-old that they had known since 14. There is no way I could ever convince myself it was appropriate, even though 16 is the legal age in both our countries.

[sianchild]

"The more I like a person, the more I can't". So well put! I think it's because if I don't succeed at making friends with them it feels worse.

[M_DeVeuve]

Alphabet soup is the perfect word for it. I've been diagnosed with 7 of those mentioned conditions plus OCD. My partner once joked that I'm a walking, talking DSM-5 and I've never laughed harder in my life 😂

[Starfruit]

I’m diagnosed with social anxiety and avoidant personality disorder, but I’ve suspected I’m autistic for quite a few years. This video makes me even more convinced. Makes me want to cry. I’m 40 years old, and no one noticed.

[SarelleSirius]

The fact that men can be quiet, and keep to themselves but be seen as hardworking and focused while a woman doing the same thing is seen as stuck up and unhappy is a shame. It’s a HUGE discriminatory issue I’ve noticed being less talkative.

[ingvildp]

Omg the eye contact thing! There are so many times I catch myself looking at something else than the person I'm talking to. And then reminding myself to look at them, but forgetting it again a few seconds later. It's also especially hard to maintain eye contact if I'm talking about something personal or something that requires a lot of mental thinking.

[RisaPlays]

"persistant drive for autonomy" sounds SO much nicer.... I've been thinking for years that I just had a quiet version of oppositional defiant disorder, then I recently learned about demand avoidance and was like omg that's it. Really, though, my entire issue with feeling pressured and demanded is the constant feeling that I was not allowed to have enough autonomy growing up. I hate obligational hugs because most of them are without my consent. I hate being told what to do because that becomes an expectation that I have no choice over because there will be a negative consequence whether I do the demand or not. The really frustrating thing is that because I've struggled so much with this with family growing up, I also tend to reject demands that I try to place on myself. Like my own preferences and choices feel like things trying to take away my autonomy sometimes and it's confusing and it sucks.

[sbates]

The walking around in circles around the playground. That is exactly me. I did this growing up and teachers always told me to go play. Kids always asked me why I was sad. I was content and I made up stories in my own head too. I was so drained from the school day, I just couldn’t interact anymore.

[hel]

Re: keeping friends. I also feel like the 'requirements' for keeping neurotypical friends are just a bit off from how friendships work for me. I think I don't have the same sort of 'friendship decay', because I can go without talking to people for years for various reasons and in my head, we're still best friends, and for people I'm very close to (who are usually also very neuro-spicy) that is true.

[jen]

You describing yourself as running around the playground in circles making up stories in your head was me - until my brother told me to stop as it was ‘weird’. At that moment I masked anything that was different. So reassuring to hear others with a similar experience 😊

[cda]

I am a 32 year-old white male who wasn't diagnosed with ASD until I personally crawled into the DSM-V myself last year and went to a professional who "knew the signs" and said it was "incredibly obvious" that I was on the spectrum. When I grew up, "autistic" was a slur on the internet meaning "irredeemibly bad at socializing. May as well just give up on trying" kind of thing.

Turns out the experts know very little about the "disorder" and there is very little evidence that it isn't as prevelent amongst women as men. I, like you, got most of my info from self-taught YT videos, but holy shit it's crazy how unaware we can be of ourselves for so long. It's like I've found an instruction manual tucked away in a drawer I never knew existed.

Good luck on your content. Just treat it like a journal or whatever, because the market is a bit saturated at the moment.

[wintergray]

Throughout all of elementary school, when teachers put comments on our report cards, every time I got "shy, quiet, keeps to herself". But no, I couldn't possibly be autistic. I was just "gifted."

[Bree-ree]

I’ve noticed all my closest friends have always had some type of mental illness/disorder or troubles at home etc and I think we are drawn to them because we can relate and our brain likes familiarity so we feel safer with people like us :)

[celesteextenebris]

The psychologist who was supposed to give me an autism diagnosis said that I can't be autistic after 3 sessions because I want to have friends and because I mask, which is, in her words, "not something that autistic people know how to do", so I got the whole alphabet soup from her instead :(

[rachaelb]

I remember my preschool teacher was so surprised when she saw me talking with my parents. She thought for years that I couldn’t talk. Funny that I don’t remember being that quiet but I was always taking in everything around me. I ate lunch alone for the first half of 7th grade because I didn’t really fit in with other kids my age. The kids that finally did reach out to me were socially awkward as well. They are most likely neurodivergent as well. I’ve noticed that since I’m no longer in school it’s harder to make new friends. I have coworkers but I’m hesitant about hanging out with people I work with. I feel like I expect people to come to me and maintaining friendships is difficult. My job is very social so on my days off and just want to be home in quiet.

[Kakashiownsyou]

I one million percent agree that women are evaluated much more consistently and harshly by their peers/the public/society, and you’re absolutely right that a lot of times with guys it’s just “leave him alone and let him cook”. But speaking as a 32-yo who was just diagnosed a year ago, I would say men are left pathologically alone, whereas women are pathologically monitored.

[veronicabramlett]

"I concentrate better when I'm not concentrating on looking at somebody" really spoke with me. I get so focused on looking at them that I don't actually hear what they're saying and my brain gets too loud to hear anything else. I have to be doing something else.

Though if I don't know I should be listening, I can't hear anything. Which my husband REALLY doesn't get. If I know I should be listening I can, and probably need to, be doing something else. If I don't know and I'm doing something else, I will 100% not even realize you were talking to me. I can actively listen while doing something. I can't be doing something and then be expected to listen to something I don't know I should be listening to!